A Modern McNamara?

With the death of Robert S. (for Strange! seriously) McNamara, I've seen a few online pieces comparing the Iraq War's own Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, with the infamous "architect of Vietnam". In the future, will Rumsfeld be universally reviled, as McNamara evidently was? I don't think so. Sure, there are similarities: both presided over wars that were seen as disasters of planning and of execution, both were notorious micro-managers, both had put their stamps on war plans. But whereas Kennedy and Johnson were never able to sell their quagmire (sorry, but I'm legally obligated to use that word, since this is about Vietnam) to a skeptical and eventually outraged public and press, Bush, Cheney, and the neocons did a fantastic job of duping a complacent public and a lapdog press corps.

Sure, there will be moments when Rumsfeld feels the wrath of the public [aside: explain to me what a multi-millionaire is doing riding the bus? Part of me is impressed that he's willing to take public transportation, part of me wonders if he's really just incredibly cheap]. But I think that those moments will be few, compared to the many public excoriations that McNamara faced. And while I admire that this father confronted Rumsfeld at that bus stop, I wonder how much good it does, other than making the guy feel better (after his blood pressure returned to normal). Rumsfeld was already an old man, long-bereft of any idealism or sense of justice after various roles in government, when he assumed his last government post - very different from McNamara, who was 44 when he became Secretary and was, by all accounts, broken by the War.

Olbermann Turns Critic, Positive Developments

Keith Olbermann is generally viewed (rightly so) as a big Obama supporter/cheerleader, so it's a bit surprising - but very gratifying - to see him smacking the administration around on its continuation of the Bush Secrecy Doctrine.

At the same time - and since I've been so negative towards the Prez on his economic policy and the above constitutional issue - he's kicking ass on plenty of issues:

• Gates' Defense budget - it actually makes a lot of sense! Never mind that it has no chance of getting through the House; too many districts are home to weapons-making factories. But it's refreshing to see. Next, any chance of getting cuts across the board, and shrinking the war industry in general?
• Obama is reaching out to Iran, both in his recent video to the Iranians, and his decision to become involved in current nuclear talks. And there are no signs that he asked Israel's permission! Quite to the contrary, actually.
• The government's long-standing (an largely ineffectual) policy of isolating Cuba might be coming to an end.
  

Brian Drain (aka Gordon Gekko Lives!)

This is the second time in the past few months I've seen this topic broached in our newspapers in the past year, but it seems more relevant now than it did back in February:

In his February 20 column, Steve Pearlstein of the Post railed against how the Finanical Industry operates at the top:

Wall Street's hypocrisy on this topic is nothing less than breathtaking. When times are good, its champions will claim that their brilliance and hard work account for the spectacular returns. But when markets turn and investors lose their shirts, these same brilliant managers are sent off with golden parachutes and invariably scooped up by rival firms that are only too willing to chalk up their mistakes to bad luck.

It would be bad enough if the consequences of this excessive pay were confined to Wall Street. Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way. For the prospect of earning untold wealth also has attracted an enormous amount of young talent that could have been more productively used in science, engineering, medicine, teaching, public service and businesses that generate genuine long-term value.

Is it not fair to ask whether the United States can remain the world's most prosperous and innovative economy when half of the seniors at the most prestigious colleges and universities now aspire to become "i-bankers" at Goldman Sachs?

Now Roger Cohen visits this same territory in his Wednesday column in the New York Times:

When I taught a journalism course at Princeton a couple of years ago, I was captivated by the bright, curious minds in my class. But when I asked students what they wanted to do, the overwhelming answer was: “Oh, I guess I’ll end up in i-banking.”

It was not that they loved investment banking, or thought their purring brains would be best deployed on Wall Street poring over a balance sheet, it was the money and the fact everyone else was doing it.

I called one of my former students, Bianca Bosker, who graduated this summer and has taken a job with The Monitor Group, a management consultancy firm (she’s also writing a book). I asked her about the mood among her peers.

“Well, I have several friends who took summer internships at Lehman that they expected to lead to full-time job, so this is a huge issue,” she said. “You can’t believe how intensely companies like Merrill would recruit at Ivy League schools. I mean, when I was a sophomore, if you could spell your name, you were guaranteed a job.”

But why do freshmen bursting to change the world morph into investment bankers?

“I guess the bottom line is the money. You could be going to grad school and paying for it, or earning six figures. And knowing nothing about money, you get to move hundreds of millions around! No wonder we’re in this mess: turns out the best and the brightest make the biggest and the worst.”

According to the Harvard Crimson, 39 percent of work-force-bound Harvard seniors this year are heading for consulting firms and financial sector companies (or were in June). That’s down from 47 percent — almost half the job-bound class — in 2007.

These numbers mirror a skewed culture. The best and the brightest should think again. Barack Obama put the issue this way at Wesleyan University in May: beware of the “poverty of ambition” in a culture of “the big house and the nice suits.”

39% of Harvard seniors going into the financial sector, down from 47%? I don't know what's more depressing, that some of the very best and brightest only want to make money, or that they're doing such a poor job of it. Sure, there's no guarantee that, had any of these people gone into medicine or engineering, they would have found a cure for cancer or developed a car that could be powered by mayonnaise. Who knows, maybe they'd be making weapons for our massive war machine (there's plenty of money there, too) or inventing less-weighty items. But I'd sure like our odds for a better world if they had chosen those careers. Too bad that it's just about the (obscene amounts of) money.

War Machine

I don't recall how I made my way to this link, but this gargantuan graphic of the 2008 United States budget is...interesting, in a maddening kind of way. Yes, we pay 67% of our discretionary budget (non-entitlement programs such as SS, Medicare, et cetera, which are funded separately) on military and national security. That's over $700 Billion, out of $1.1 trillion. And what do we have to show for it? World peace and prosperity? Not so much. Economic dominance? Seemingly slipping away; we were just passed by China as the #2 exporter (in case you're curious, #1 is a country of 82 million people that sits in the middle of Europe, has a high standard of living, and makes some nice cars too).

Do any of the three (OK, two) presidential candidates even talk about military expenditures? No, not really. Unless it's about an increase in said expenditures, perhaps. Nobody wants to sound like they're soft on the bad guys. Plus, they probably suspect that the big military contractors will do their best to scuttle any campaign that even thinks about substantially reducing the Pentagon's budget, and they're probably right. Remember how quickly Howard Dean was shouted down four years ago when he had the temerity to suggest that we wouldn't necessarily always have the world's biggest military? As if the third-largest country in the world has the God-given right to the biggest military force on the planet.

While plenty of things are broken in this country, things that tax money could really go a long way toward fixing, the military-industrial complex will continue to devour the lion's share of the budget, until someone residing in the White House has the courage (and congressional majority) to start a draw down. I hope that person comes along soon, but I'm not optimistic. I don't think it's impossible; dust off Eisenhower's farewell address, tell the people where the money would go instead (health care, infrastructure, tax cuts), then sit back and watch the proponents of the war machine as they attempt to defend sinking almost 70% of income taxes into weapons and troops. But whoever decides to tackle it must realize that it's a signature issue that will dominate their administration's agenda. It's four-year fight worth having though, the sooner the better.